Back in February, the folks at 3DCenter managed to break a 100-percent overclock on Intel's 22nm Core i7-3770K, the company's flagship quad-core Ivy Bridge desktop processor with 128 KB of L1 cache (4x32 KB), 1 MB of L2 cache (4x256 KB) and 8 MB of L3 cache. The processor operates at a stock frequency 3.50 GHz, and as another source has just confirmed, the chip is more than capable of breaking a 100-percent overclock provided the right base clock multiplier values, core voltages, extreme cooling and dedicated overclocking patience and voltage timing precision.

Image source: Expreview

On Tuesday, ultra high-performance overclocking enthusiast x-powerx800pro wanted to prove to the world that Intel's Core i7 3770K can reach 6.6 GHz using a base clock multiplier of 63x and a clock speed of 6584.86 MHz (104.52 x 63). Nevertheless, the raw compute performance resulting from such a massive overclock results in a SuperPi 1M calculation in just 5.585s, breaking HiCookie's August 24th world record of 5.781s on Intel's 32nm Core i7 Extreme 980X. Of course, the chip being used is an Intel Engineering Sample, possibly from a great cherry-picked batch at that, but the results have nevertheless been validated in CPU-Z 1.60.

Image source: Expreview

As a precaution, Expreview's page incorrectly identifies the chip as a 32nm processor, when it is in fact a 22nm Ivy Bridge engineering sample chip. However, more images of the achievement can be found here.

Intel has hinted at two signs of potential good news for prospective 22nm Ivy Bridge desktop chip buyers this month. Not only will it be pushing forward the launch of its Core i5 and Core i7 desktop models from Sunday, April 29th to Monday, April 23rd, but it will also be slashing the mass-quantity bulk shipment prices for retailers worldwide.

Our friends at VR-Zone are reporting that average price cuts end up somewhere between $7 and $8 dollars, and while not a significant difference, these prices are reflected in pricing for 1,000 units and not actual retial pricing. In other words, Newegg, Micro Center, Amazon, Fry's Electronics and all the other great American retailers and online e-tailers of this world can very well decide however they want to price these chips, as they will all be getting away with paying $7 to $8 less for them in quantities of 1,000.

Where the cost of a Core i7 3770K was expected to be $320 for retailers, it will now be $313. Where the cost of a Core i5 3750K was expected to be $220 for retailers, it will now be $212. The same goes for all other Core i5 and Core i7 models listed in the chart above. Nevertheless, these cost-reduced wholesale prices transform into retail pricing is a different matter entirely, and this includes pre-orders that have already been placed around the Web.

We can only guess that AMD will react to Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge desktop cost reduction as it will impact their bottom line over the next few months without some sort of creative marketing response.

Over the weekend, the folks at Bulgarian-based PC site Laptop.bg were given a reference notebook with the unreleased 22nm Core i7 3610QM 2.30GHz quad-core Ivy Bridge mobile chip. The site's benchmarks yielded a clear performance edge over the chip's current 32nm Core i7 2670QM 2.20GHz quad-core Sandy Bridge counterpart. Now, we know that DonanimHaber was also given a reference Samsung notebook with a Core i7 3610QM sample chip back in late-March and reported similar benchmarks, but we wanted to provide empirical data from at least two sources before offering evidence of mobile Ivy Bridge's performance advantages.

Nevertheless, DonanimHaber reports a 22nm Core i7 3610QM score of 6.09 pts in Cinebench R11, while Laptop.bg reports 6.25 pts in the same benchmark. Meanwhile, the 32nm Core i7 2670QM receives a score of 5.1 points in the same benchmark, indicating that the new Ivy Bridge chip yields a 19 to 22-percent performance increase over its Sandy Bridge counterpart.

As many Intel hardware enthusiasts are well aware of, yesterday and today mark the company's official 24-hour debut of its flagship Z77 mainstream chipset based on Socket LGA 1155. Of course, the reason why the launch spans two days is because it fell on Easter Sunday, a day which many businesses around the world were closed and therefore unable to get their greedy capitalist hands around prospective dollars surrounding new Z77-based motherboard products.

Nevertheless, EVGA in Orange County, Southern California has just announced its first motherboard powered by the Z77 chipset, dubbed the EVGA Z77 FTW (151-IB-E699-KR). This is the company's flagship Z77 board, denoted by its "For The Win" branding, and features support for both second-gen 32nm Sandy Bridge and third-gen 22nm Ivy Bridge mainstream chips based on Socket LGA 1155.In particular, the EVGA Z77 FTW supports up to 32GB of DDR3 2133MHz+ memory on four slots, includes five PCI-Express x16 / x8 slots (supporting Nvidia 2-way, 3-way, 4-way SLI plus PhysX or CrossFireX), one PCI-Express x1 slot, four SATA III 6Gbps ports, four SATA II 3Gbps ports, six USB 3.0 ports (four from Intel Z77 PCH, two from ASMedia ASM1042), two E-SATA ports and two Marvell Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The board is currently available for pre-order directly from EVGA's site for $329.99, and we definitely expect those pre-orders to sell out as quickly as possible considering the massive demand for this new flagship LGA 1155 chipset.

Intel executives have recently stated that the company expects its manufacturing partners to have a total of 75 new ultrabook designs releasing throughout 2012.

The company currently has 26 different models available for purchase in various markets around the world, with industry momentum continuing to scale behind the 9-month old Ultrabook computing category. According to a recent Intel blog post, "it is likely that the choice of ultrabooks will be pretty wide and consequent competition between manufacturers will clearly impact pricing."

Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook - 15mm at maximal point

As we wrote in July 2011, the chip giant expects Ultrabooks will eventually seize about 40-percent of the notebook market. A month later in August, Intel Capital invested $300 million in an Ultrabook Fund to help drive industry support for this emerging category of sleek ultra-thin devices that enable thin, light and beautiful designs less than 21mm (0.8 inch) thick "at mainstream prices."

Of course, that last marketing statement is up for debate, as current ultrabook Average Selling Prices (ASPs) aren't expected to drop down to consumer "sweet spot" prices between $599 to $699 until at least the middle of 2013.

Beginning a month from now in late-April, most of Intel's partners will release their second-generation 22nm Ivy Bridge ultrabooks, featuring improved CPU compute performance and power efficiency, while a few will even support discrete GPU design wins with the addition of 28nm Nvidia GeForce 600 Series "Kepler" and 28nm AMD Radeon 7000 Series "Graphics Core Next" GPUs.

We are very much looking forward to Intel's second-generation Ivy Bridge ultrabooks next month along with the rest of the product designs from its partnering manufacturers in the Ultrabook market segment for the rest of 2012.

According toindustry sources in Taiwan, Intel has notified its hardware partners that it will cease production of 25 desktop CPU models in order to pave the way for its upcoming 22nm Ivy Bridge desktop CPUs, which are expected to launch in April 2012.

The report states that Intel will cease production and then terminate production of these CPUs in two major segments over the first half of 2012. Between January 2011 and March 2011 (Q1 2012), Core i7 875K, Core i7 860S, Core i5 760, Core i5 750S, Core i5 655K, Celeron 450 and Celeron 430 production will be terminated. During the same timeframe, Core i5 661, Core i5 660, Core i3 530, Pentium E5700 and Celeron E3500 production will all be suspended, and production will be terminated in Q2 2012.

Between April and June (Q2 2012), Core i7 960, Core i7 950, Core i7 930, Core i7 870 and Pentium G960 production will all be suspended and terminated. During the same timeframe, Core i7 880S, Core i7 870S, Core Duo E7500, Core Duo E7600, Pentium E6600, Pentium E550 and Celeron E3300 production will be terminated.